


Kiss the Sky

by tfm



Series: Beau the Betrayer [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 18:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: One-shot sequel to "Beau the Betrayer."Beau and Dairon travel towards the Brokenveil Bluff to meet up with the Mighty Nein. Discussions (and other things) are had along the way.





	Kiss the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned, this is a direct sequel to "Beau the Betrayer." Most of the events mentioned are things that happened in that story, so if you haven't read the other one, you may be very confused.

Kiss the Sky

The morning dawned bright and hot, and Beauregard Lionett stared unblinking at the cerulean blue sky.

She and Dairon had been traveling for four days now, and only on the fourth night had Beau found herself sleeping soundly. She woke with the dawn, and appreciate the hour or so of rest before they would break fast, and keep moving East.

It was almost three months since she’d escaped – or rather, been rescued from – the Ironlock Arena. She had been away for almost as long as she had spent there. Though three months was a very small percentage of her life, it was three months that had changed almost everything.

They had just about hit the Ashkeeper Peaks, and would soon have to head north. This would be the actually dangerous part of the journey, traveling so close to the Xhorhasian border, and the front line of the war.

Rather than keep going, and going to Talonstadt, they camped not too far out of Felderwin. Talonstadt was a depressing enough place at the best of times, and Beau wasn’t particularly in the mood for extensive interaction with other people.

Beau had been generally silent in the time since they’d left Zadash, as she mulled things over in her head. The travel was tough enough that it meant they were both exhausted by the end of the day, not leaving a great deal of time for extensive chatting.

On the fourth day, though, she decided, apropos of nothing, that there were a few things that she needed to tell Dairon, if they were going to...whatever. Do that.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Beau said.

There was a pause. ‘I’m listening,’ Dairon said, eventually.

Beau didn’t speak straight away. She was still trying to figure out the best way to tell her once-mentor now...partner?...about the last woman she’d fucked. Okay, maybe not the last, but the last one with feelings attached.

‘While I was...in there, I sort of kind of had...I guess you’d call it a relationship. With one of the Patrons. And when they thought the relationship was getting...a way they didn’t like, they pitted us against each other, and I had to kill her.’ Beau said all of this as fast as she dared, know that if she didn’t get it out now, she would never get it out.

There was another pause. ‘That must have been difficult.’ There was a slight hitch in Dairon’s voice. It took Beau almost thirty seconds to figure it out. When she did, she couldn’t believe it.

‘You knew,’ she said. How could she have been so godsdamned stupid. Dairon had done reconnaissance in the arena. Of course she would have heard about something like that.

Beau felt a blush rise in her dark cheeks. She felt fucking stupid, now. Stupid, and pissed.

‘Beauregard,’ Dairon started, putting a hand on Beau’s shoulder. Beau shied away from her touch. She had no idea how to respond to this situation.

‘I’m not upset because you know,’ Beau said, eventually. She couldn’t help the undercurrent of anger running through it. ‘I’m upset because you knew and you didn’t tell me that you knew.’

‘I didn’t want to make things uncomfortable for you.’

‘Well they’re sure as fuck uncomfortable now!’

‘Beauregard.’ Dairon’s voice was sad and tired. Not that it changed much in inflection, but Beau had spent enough time with the woman to know the changes in her mood. ‘I should have told you earlier,’ she admitted.

‘Yes, you should have.’ Beau didn’t look up, kept her arms wrapped around her knees. She wasn’t sure why she was so upset. It wasn’t as though she had cared _that_ much about Amaril. It had just been...a source of comfort in a dark place, right up until the point where it wasn’t.

‘I wanted you to be able to tell me in your own time; I didn’t want you feeling like you had to tell me more before you were ready to.’

There was an instant – a split second of doubt – where Beau considered that she might be being unreasonable. Because she _hadn’t_ felt comfortable discussing it until now, and if Dairon had brought it up earlier, well...she probably would have gotten pissed. Just like she was getting pissed now.

_Ah, shit_. Why were feelings so fucking complicated?

Dairon seemed to take her silence for fury, and kept her distance. Even though her anger had quelled a little, Beau thought that distance probably wasn’t a bad thing. When you were traveling with a group, it was easy enough to break away a hundred feet or so to do your own thing. That sort of distance was harder when it was two people traveling together.

So Beau wandered a way off, keeping mind to stay within visual distance. She didn’t want a repeat of what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. There was a decent sized tree that she could practice her spinning kicks on.

By the time she had worn herself out, she was dripping with sweat, and there were more than a few cuts and scrapes on her calves and shins, from where she had gone in too close on the kick.

‘Sorry for being a dick,’ she muttered to Dairon, when she returned to their camp-site, wiping her brow.

‘You are quite entitled to be a dick,’ Dairon said. She was roasting some of their preserved meats over the open flame.

‘You don’t deserve it.’

‘Whether or not I deserve it is immaterial. In this circumstance, my patience will do you better than my acerbity.’

‘Shit,’ Beau said. ‘If I’d known it’d only take getting kidnapped for you to be nice to me, I would have done it a year ago.’ The joke didn’t quite land as well as it could have, and the strained look on Dairon’s face that had been present since Zadash only deepened.

‘Sorry,’ Beau said again. ‘You know us twenty-somethings. We spend a lot of time with our feet in our mouths. Nothing like you three hundred year olds.’

There was a moment of silence. And then.

‘Two hundred and two,’ Dairon said, and Beau was a little surprised. She was expecting to have to drag that bit out a little longer. Then…

_T_wo_-hundred and two_?

That was...Beau could be born, and live and die her entire life twice times within that amount of time, and it wasn’t even half as long as Dairon _could_ live. Not even a _third_ as long as Dairon could live.

The human equivalent, she supposed, would be if she spontaneously started banging a thirty-year-old, which really, was not exactly outside the realm of ordinary. Shit, she’d been banging thirty-year-olds since she was eighteen, and it hadn’t been weird then.

Okay, maybe it was a little weird.

Strangely, though, it made her feel a little more comfortable with the situation. Not that the age was high, but that it was actually pretty low for an elf. That Dairon was barely into adulthood, compared to how old she seemed to act sometimes.

Even still, if Beau lived her best life, lived to a ripe old age, Dairon would still be not even halfway through her lifespan. But who was to say their…whatever (she still hesitated to call it a relationship) would last that long anyway. Either or both of them could die tomorrow. Again.

‘I can’t believe you didn’t invite me to your birthday party,’ Beau said, in lieu of any reasonable, well put together answer.

‘What?’ Dairon said, clearly confused.

‘Well, two hundred seems like it should be a big occasion,’ Beau said, shrugging. ‘Would’ve thought you’d want to celebrate it, is all.’

‘I care less about these things than you might think, Beauregard,’ Dairon said, drily.

Beau grinned. The tension had eased slightly in the wake of the changed conversation subject, and Beau had, after two years, had managed to wrangle the first bit of personal information she knew about Dairon. It seemed ridiculous that they were...doing whatever it was that they were doing, and Beau knew so little about them.

‘Have you ever been in love?’ Beau blurted out, and Dairon reeled noticeably. Then, with the benefit of hindsight, Beau realized exactly how that question sounded, as though she was asking…Before she could rush to fix her mistake, Dairon was speaking.

‘That’s a bit of a loaded question,’ Dairon said.

‘It’s just...I don’t really know much about you,’ Beau admitted. ‘You’re an Expositor with the Cobalt Soul, and you don’t like the Kryn. If we’re gonna...y’know...I feel like I should know more about you.’

It didn’t help that Dairon seemed to know everything about her. That she was from Kamordah, that she had a volatile relationship with her parents, that she traveled around Wildemount getting into trouble.

‘I...There are some things in my past that I would rather forget,’ Dairon admitted. Beau could definitely empathize with that. There was another long pause, and Beau’s brain told her to let it pass.

‘I grew up in Bladegarden,’ Dairon said, eventually. Beau raised an eyebrow. She knew that Dairon had spent some time in Bladegarden during the war, but to have grown up there. It was very close to the border.

‘I grew up with as happy a childhood as one could expect, perhaps with a little impertinence on my part.’ Beau grinned. There was a reason, after all, why Dairon had seen herself in Beau. ‘Not long after I reached adulthood, there was a Drow incursion into the Empire. Much of my family was killed.’

‘This is long before the war started,’ Beau said, shrewdly.

‘Yes. It was not, they say, an officially sanctioned incursion, but an incursion nonetheless. For so long, my mind was twisted with the idea of revenge, of taking out the Kryn, but then, after joining the Cobalt Soul, after spending time in Xhorhas, it became very apparent that there were assholes on both sides of the war. To answer your question, though...it seems like there has been very little time for love.’

‘Very little time in two hundred years?’

Dairon rolled her eyes, and gave Beau a Look, but she seemed amused, rather than annoyed. Amused enough that after they ate, after the fire had been reduced to mere embers, they did not protest when Beau laid out her bedroll right next to Dairon, who was getting ready to go into her nightly trance.

‘Do you want to just...lie for a bit?’ Beau asked, hesitantly. It seemed weird to say “cuddle.” Beau kind of wanted to do more than that, but on a few occasions, they’d tried to take their...whatever it was further, Beau had been struck with flashbacks to her time in the pit.

But lying down, staring up at the stars, body warmth pressed into her...That seemed safe enough.

It wasn’t long before Beau dropped into an uneasy slumber.

The Cobalt Soul had given her a straw mat on a ground the first few months; since then, she’d kind of been able to sleep anywhere. That didn’t mean that the jagged rocks that dug into her back were comfortable; they kept dragging her mind back to wakefulness, her thoughts back to reality.

Funnily, it meant that she probably wouldn’t have any nightmares. Another strange, kinda filthy thought crossed her mind. Like if she was so busy trying to get comfortable while Dairon railed her, then she wouldn’t have any flashbacks to things that she would rather forget.

‘Hey, Dairon,’ Beau said, excitedly, and started to shake the other woman to awareness. Too late did she realize the implications of suddenly waking her companion from her trance in the middle of the night on the side of the road. Dairon jumped to her feet, ready to strike.

‘No, it’s not that,’ Beau said, quickly. It seemed a bit tacky now, to say, “Hey, wanna fuck?”. Still, now that they were up… ‘It seems stupid now,’ she admitted. ‘But I just realized; out here, lying on rocks, and looking up at the stars. It’s nice,’ she finished lamely.

Dairon stared at her. ‘Did you have another nightmare?’

‘No, I just...’ Well, it was now or never. ‘Wanna fuck?’

Dairon’s brow furrowed, as though she thought she must have misheard Beau, even though they both knew very well that she hadn’t. ‘You know, I always thought that Zeenoth was exaggerating when he called you insolent.’

Beau pretended to be hurt. ‘I wondered where that came from. Zeenoth called me insolent? I’m devastated.’

‘Not to mention brash, impatient, and a number of other things that I dare not repeat.’

‘Well,’ Beau said, reasonably. ‘I didn’t want to fuck Zeenoth.’

‘And yet I’m sure you’re more insolent, brash and impatient with those you do want to fuck.’

‘I mean, I woke you up, didn’t I?’

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ Dairon muttered, but that hardly seemed to be the point. Sleep, trance, it was all the same thing.

Beau took a chance. ‘Is this the sort of situation where you’d want me to be insolent, brash and impatient?’ Be a brat, in other words.

They were speaking in such vague terms that Dairon herself was getting impatient.

‘How about this,’ they said. ‘Take off your clothes, and we can go from there.’

There was something pretty fucking hot about Dairon telling Beau what to do, and she found herself stripping down to her wrappings immediately. Dairon quirked an eyebrow.

‘I think this is perhaps the first time you have obeyed my orders without question.’

‘Probably because you aren’t my teacher any more,’ Beau said, smugly. The cool air made some parts of her body pay a little more attention than others.

‘Insolent,’ Dairon muttered, but she was smiling. She took her sweet time taking her own vestments off, carefully folding them before placing them neatly on a rock. Beau gave a slight scoff of frustration, which only caused Dairon to slow down even further.

Beau let Dairon push her back down onto the ground, and she edged her body so that the rocks were digging into her back. She wasn’t _there_. Wasn’t in the arena. Wasn’t with Layla or Amaril. She was with Dairon, on the road outside of Felderwin.

She was safe.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen Dairon naked, but it was the first time she had seen Dairon naked in the context of about to be engaging in sexual activity.

It was nice.

The elf kissed her way up Beau’s bare stomach, stopping on each and every scar. Beau gave a slight intake of breath, and Dairon stopped.

‘Is this okay?’ they asked.

‘Yes,’ Beau breathed. She let her hands wrap around the back of Dairon’s neck, bringing her down closer.

There was no distance between them.

After, Beau felt more relaxed than she had in months. Certainly more relaxed than she had been in the days since they’d returned from the Swavain Isles. She let her head rest against Dairon’s chest, and stared up at the sky.

The beautiful, clear night sky. Something she’d never properly taken the chance to appreciate before getting stuck in a fighting pit for three months. Not that she had been inside the whole time. There just wasn’t exactly much time for stargazing.

‘You know, usually after stuff like this, I skip out in the middle of the night,’ Beau said.

‘I see,’ Dairon said, drily. ‘Well, if you want to… “skip out,” I will pretend not to notice.’ Beau didn’t move.

‘I mean, you know where I live,’ Beau said. ‘It’d be so awkward.’

‘If you do feel uncomfortable, do not feel you need to continue this on my account.’

‘I am an adult,’ Beau reminded her. ‘I’m capable of making complex emotional decisions.’ Even still, Beau felt mollified by the fact that Dairon was solidifying themself as a person that had Beau’s best interests at heart. It was something that, aside from her friends, so few people had been willing to do.

‘And what do your complex emotions tell you?’ Beau could tell that Dairon was mildly amused by Beau’s rebuttal.

‘That we should do this again sometime,’ said Beau.

It was a nice thought to fall asleep on.

…

The next morning, Beau awoke to a light sprinkle of rain. A low cloud cover had come in overnight, and it looked like it was going to be a miserable day.

They had barely been on the road for three hours when Beau saw the sword-wielding figures in the distance. There was nothing but an expanse of flatness between them; even if they did run, the only way to get to where they wanted to go, was through.

Beau gripped her staff a little tighter.

‘There is a toll for passing through these parts,’ said the figure at the front of the group, the moment Beau and Dairon drew near. There were three of them, ‘Nothing less than everything you got.’

‘I would urge you to reconsider,’ Dairon said, flatly. Beau couldn’t help but grin. These guys clearly didn’t know what they were getting into. Two unarmored, (seemingly) unarmed women, walking north. Must have seemed like easy pickings.

Funnily enough, they did not reconsider.

After a mere minute of fighting, a couple of them looked like they might want to, after the flurry of attacks that Beau and Dairon unleashed upon them. One went down like a sack of bricks to Dairon’s fist, and another lunged forward towards Beau with his sword.

The blade sliced through her bindings, the tip of it finding skin. Blood pounded in her ears, and welled from the wound. For a brief moment, the world seemed to freeze. Things moved in slow motion, and sound did not seem to reach her ears. This was it. She was going to die. Ahead of her, she saw Dairon turn, saw the mouthed, frantic, “Beauregard!”

Distracted as she was, Dairon didn’t notice – or didn’t react in time to – the sword thrusting into her chest. That, more than the bandit swinging for her head, more than the rapid blood loss, was what drew Beau back to reality. With a yell, she headbutted the shithead in front of her, then ducked around to deal with the one that had stabbed Dairon. She had punched him five or six times before realizing that he had been unconscious since the first punch, and probably dead since the fifth.

She pulled back, hand shaking. There was a soft touch on her shoulder, and she spun around ready to kill.

Dairon, thankfully, dodged the punch with ease.

There was an awkward beat of silence. ‘Sorry,’ Beau muttered. She looked down, and realized that all three of the bandits were dead. Good fucking riddance.

‘I shouldn’t have snuck up on you,’ Dairon admitted. Beau wasn’t sure about that. There hadn’t exactly been much sneaking going on. Just a touch on the shoulder.

‘I mean, sorry for...panicking.’ Even panicking seemed to be the wrong turn of phrase. ‘Freezing, whatever.’ She looked down and saw the blood spilling from the wound in Dairon’s stomach. ‘Shit, lemme get a healing potion.’

Dairon waved her off. ‘It’s not too deep. Worry about your own wounds.’

The cut that Beau had taken wasn’t as bad as she had first thought. It was the feeling of having something carve through her, more than anything, that had set off her panic attack. Even still, Dairon refused to take the potion, and only just consented to letting Beau tend to her wounds, but only after they had moved off a considerable distance.

‘Had to do a lot of self-care in the Pit,’ Beau told her, when Dairon raised an eyebrow at the efficiency of her bandaging. ‘After a while, you get pretty good at it.’ She handed Dairon a flask. ‘For the pain.’ Dairon took the flask, and drank as though she’d been crawling through the desert. There was a flash of light across their abdomen as the wound knitted together beneath the bandage.

There was a beat of silence, and the elf raised an eyebrow. ‘You tricked me,’ they said.

‘Well, it was the only way I could get you to take care of yourself,’ Beau shrugged. Dairon had been so distracted with the gritting of the teeth, and the closing of the eyes that it had been easy enough to pour their one healing potion into a flask.

‘What about you?’

‘Eh, I’ve done a lot more than walk with way worse wounds than this,’ Beau said. There was a vaguely uncomfortable sort of silence.

Dairon knew the broad strokes of what had happened in the Pit. Based on the reconnaissance she’d done, it was likely she knew a lot more than Beau did about a lot of the things that had happened there. She didn’t know the little stuff though, like how the chicken was always overcooked, and in the Ladder rooms – even the fancy ones – it was difficult to get hot water after seven o’clock. If you had a late fight, the chances of getting a nice, hot bath were practically none.

‘How about we rest for a bit,’ Dairon said. ‘You have not heard from Jester yet, have you?’

‘No.’ Beau shook her head. She was sure if the Mighty Nein _really_ needed her, then she would have heard something from Jester. As it was, the last time she’d gotten a message was the day before yesterday.

‘Then we can take a little bit longer,’ Dairon said, decisively, and Beau was glad for it. Though she hadn’t lost all that much blood, there was too much on her mind for her to be making coherent decisions.

They set their things down under the shade of a large ash tree a little way off the road; it afforded them a reasonable amount of shade from the mid-afternoon sun. Realistically, Beau was starting to think that they would be stopping for the night. She lay down in between a couple of roots, and stared at the branch-framed sky.

‘I can’t believe I froze,’ she said, after a few minutes of silence. She felt frustrated, but more than that, she felt embarrassed. It had been three months since she’d escaped that stupid place, why was it still affecting her so freaking much?

‘Better it happened now, here, than with a much hardier beast,’ was all Dairon said. She had a point, Beau thought. In spite of the fact that they’d almost been taken out by them, bandits generally weren’t too hard of a fight.

‘Yeah, there’ve been some fun ones along the way,’ Beau said.

‘This is with your pa—friends?’ Dairon asked. Beau had never really gone into the specifics of the creatures that they’d fought, or the things that they’d done.

‘Oh yeah, what’ve we fought?...An oni, a hydra, a dragon...A young one, mind you,’ she added, when Dairon’s eyebrows raised. Not to mention the fact that Beau had technically missed that entire fight. ‘A bunch of Yuan-Ti, a killer robot, a fiend.’ She was pretty sure she’d covered most of the big ones.

‘It is no wonder that you managed to survive,’ Dairon said. ‘In the arena,’ she clarified.

‘Well,’ Beau said, reasonably. ‘Technically I didn’t.’

Dairon frowned, but didn’t say anything. Beau wondered how much of _that_ stuff she’d picked up on while doing her reconnaissance at the Ironlock Arena. It was no secret the way the battles worked, and surely if there had been scuttlebutt about Amaril, there had been talk of the gruesome deaths.

‘How many times?’ Dairon asked. She had only been there for one of them. Beau hesitated for a moment, then tried to remember.

‘Six?’ she said, not entirely sure of the number. She ran through them, trying to remember. Somehow, they were harder to remember than the pre-Pit battles. They all sort of blurred together. ‘Stabbed through the chest twice.’ Beau counted them off on her fingers. ‘Arrow to the neck once, smite – smited? Smote? I dunno, that, once…’ She had to struggle to remember the others. Was there a _Fireball_? No, that had been Amaril. She hadn’t died to that, though part of her wished she had. The Otyugh? No, she hadn’t died to that either, though it had been close, and there had been a few times she had screamed for death to take her.

Not that there was anyone left alive that knew that.

Instead, she screamed as she woke from the nightmare of its memory. Not a loud scream; she’d never been the sort to scream loudly from nightmares. A scream just the same, though. When it happened while Dairon was out of her trance, the other woman would insist on holding her, on coaching her through the rushed breathing. Beau imagined that Dairon had had her fair share of nightmares over the years.

_Oh, the fucking _Blight, she remembered. That godsdamned Necromancer_. _That one had fucking _hurt_. There was another one, she thought, but fucked if she could remember what it was.

Maybe it should have worried Beau that she had become so cavalier about all the times she had died in the Ironlock Arena. Not that it wasn’t effecting her anymore, but it wasn’t as though she could go back and change what had happened. Not without some hardcore Dunamancy.

Dairon looked shaken, and Beau didn’t exactly blame her. It was some pretty heavy stuff. She hadn’t really gotten over it herself just yet, but it was easier to be blasé about it than to think about just how much it was affecting her.

Still, _Dairon_ being shaken was a situation that Beau was kinda new to.

‘Hey.’ She gave Dairon an uneasy smile. ‘I’m still here. I’m...I’m okay.’ She almost sort of believed it herself.

‘I know.’ Dairon nodded, but she seemed to steel herself against something nonetheless. ‘I just...I worry about you.’

Beau raised an eyebrow. The last time Dairon had told Beau that they worried about her, it had been almost flippant. Now, there was a bit more emotional gravitas to it.

‘I got really fucking unlucky one time,’ Beau said. ‘I did something I shouldn’t have done, and I paid the price.’

Dairon looked at her, frowning. ‘Unlucky, I will give you, but do not let yourself think that you did something wrong. This is not something that was your fault.’ Realistically, Beau knew that, but it was hard to convince her psyche of the idea.

She supposed that she would probably get used to the thought eventually, but it would take a bit of time.

As Beau had predicted, they stayed the night under the ash tree. When Beau woke the next day, it was well-after mid-morning, and the sun was high in the sky. The wound that cut across her chest had already started to scab over.

While Dairon fetched water, Beau started doing pull-ups. She’d been neglecting them for a few days, having not found many suitable trees on the road from Zadash. The movement tugged a bit at the sword wound, but it did not reopen.

She had gotten in an even two dozen by the time Dairon returned, and was making her way up to three.

Dairon stopped, waterskins in hand, and watched for a few moments.

‘You checking me out?’ Beau grinned, but did not stop. ‘I can do them one-handed if you really want a show.’

To her surprise, Dairon said, ‘Alright,’ and they had a faint sort of smile on their face. Beau managed about a dozen one-armed pull-ups before the strain made itself known. She dropped to the ground, and shook her shoulders out. ‘Very impressive,’ Dairon said. It took Beau a moment to process that Dairon was not being sarcastic.

‘Well, I like to stay fit,’ Beau shrugged. As if Dairon didn’t know that already.

‘You do this every morning?’

‘Well, most mornings,’ Beau said. ‘When there’s a tree around. Otherwise it’s just push-ups. If Caleb were here, I’d get him to cast _Levitate _on my staff.’

Dairon nodded. ‘It’s good that you keep your body maintained. No wonder you caught up to me.’ Beau felt no small amount of pride at the compliment. A compliment from Dairon was a rare thing, and an unprompted one at that.

‘Well, it’s better than being forced to read books,’ Beau shrugged.

‘And yet I’m told that you mastered Deep Speech in a matter of weeks.’ Beau raised an eyebrow.

‘Didn’t realize you’d gotten a full account of my insolence from Zeenoth,’ she said.

Dairon gave a slight smirk. ‘Zeenoth was all too eager to give a full account without any prompting. He was quite glad to be rid of you.’

Beau snorted. ‘Story of my life,’ she said. The words prompted a slightly awkward silence.

‘And yet you have a group of friends that quite willingly walked through fire to find you,’ Dairon said. Beau conceded the point. For all that she’d spent much of her time in the Pit thinking that her friends had abandoned her, they had come through in a massive way in the end.

She didn’t think she could ever repay them for that. Even though she’d probably spend the rest of her life trying. How exactly _could_ she repay something like that? Not to mention all the shit that Dairon had done to find her.

‘Yeah,’ Beau said, finally. ‘It’s nice,’ she admitted. ‘Finally having people that give a fuck about me.’ She couldn’t help but notice that Dairon was still staring at her abs. She lowered her pants a couple of inches, with a small smirk. She had worked fucking hard for that V-shape. The least she could do was show it off a little more. Dairon looked up, suddenly. There was a slight tinge of red to her dark cheeks.

_Ha. So she is capable of being embarrassed. Good to know._

‘You know,’ Beau said. ‘If you want a closer look, you only need to ask.’

‘It is broad daylight,’ Dairon said. She sounded amused, rather than abashed, which Beau took as a good sign.

‘Yeah, and there’s no-one for miles,’ Beau pointed out. Even the road was a little way off. ‘It’s a perfectly reasonable opportunity to fuck me against a tree.’

When they started back on the road, Beau couldn’t help but walk with a bit of a spring in her step.

…

After seven days of travel, Beau finally reunited with her friends.

They were far away from any town or village, and Beau assumed that Caleb had cast the _Magnificent Mansion_ for them to hunker down in while waiting for her arrival. Beau had spoken with Jester twice in the last couple of days, and each time, the tiefling had been overly elusive as to the exact reason that Beau was actually needed.

It took a while to find the shimmering door on the exact section of the Bluffs that Jester had directed them to. Beau grinned at the sight of the tiefling that had fallen asleep on the stoop, waiting for them. It wasn’t that late

‘Jester,’ she called out, in a loud whisper. The tiefling jumped to her feet, waking in an instant.

‘Beau!’ she shrieked, running to wrap Beau in a very tight hug. ‘I missed you so much!’ Beau let Jester hug her for as long as she needed to. In any case, it was kind of nice.

Then, they followed Jester into the mansion proper, where a pretty nice spread of food was waiting. Certainly much nice than what they’d been eating over the past week. ‘So,’ Beau said, as she loaded her plate up with an unhealthy amount of bacon. ‘Now you can tell me why you _really_ need me here.’

‘_Well_,’ Jester said, in the tone of voice that told Beau unequivocally that she wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘The thing that we said we needed your help with we sort of already dealt with, but I didn’t want you to have to turn around and go_ all_ the way back to Zadash...’ she trailed off.

‘Uh huh,’ Beau said, mentally rolling her eyes. She found that she wasn’t as upset as she would have thought. She’d had to leave Zadash eventually, and the journey to the Brokenveil Bluffs hadn’t been nearly as bad as it could have been. Definitely not as bad as the horror show she had built up in her mind over the last few weeks.

Beau and Dairon’s arrival seemed to rouse the rest of the Mighty Nein from their chambers, and Beau was treated to hugs from Caduceus, Fjord and Nott, an awkward wave from Caleb, and a stalwart nod from Yasha.

‘When do you have to get back to Zadash?’ Beau asked Dairon.

‘If it is, ah, alright with the rest of you, I may stay for a while,’ Dairon said. Beau did not let her surprise show, satisfying herself with giving Dairon a Look. The rest of the group did not seem to have any major concerns about the request, for which Beau was grateful. The last thing she wanted was to be torn between her friends and her...girlfriend? Still not a suitable word. Somehow less suitable than partner.

‘I can create another room for you,’ Caleb said. Almost imperceptibly, Dairon looked towards Beau, who cleared her throat.

‘Uh, no need. She can share my room.’ Jester made an “oooh” sound, which Beau dutifully ignored. Once upon a time, she might have been upset, or embarrassed, but there were worse things in the world than being ashamed of loving someone. Or...liking someone a lot. Or...whatever.

‘If there are any changes you would like to make...’ Caleb said, trailing off, as though he didn’t particularly want to hear about the sorts of changes she would want to make to the room now that someone she was fucking was staying in it with her.

‘I think we’re good,’ Beau said, as she and Dairon went to make their way upstairs.

Actually, now that Beau thought about it, there was one change she wanted to make. She ran back to the table to talk to Caleb.

‘_Ja_, I think I can do that,’ he said, after she made her request. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Okay, it is done.’

‘Thanks, man.’ Beau gave him a nod, and returned to the staircase to lead Dairon up to their room.

Beau waited until the door was shut behind them to ask the question that had been playing on her mind for the past ten minutes.

‘Are you staying to keep an eye on me?’ Beau asked. ‘Or because you want to spend time with me?’

‘Neither,’ Dairon said, and Beau knew for a fact that they were lying. ‘You and your friends have an uncanny knack for being in the right place to gather a multitude of relevant intelligence. I would be a fool not to take advantage of that.’ There was a slight smirk playing on Dairon’s lips. Beau leaned forward and kissed them.

‘Whatever you say,’ she said. Then, she went to the window – the newly created window – and pulled back the curtains.

The view of the sky was not a real one, but it was close enough to the real thing for Beau’s liking. She had gone so long without seeing an untarnished sky, that even a day without it would be too much.

Caleb had done a pretty good job on it; the fake sun was just about to dip below the horizon and everything. Beau lay down on the bed, and without a moment’s hesitation, Dairon lay down next to her.

Together they watched the sun set.


End file.
